Web Application Configuration Analyzer (WACA) is a tool that scans a server against a set of best practices recommended for pre-production and production servers. The list of best practices is derived from the Microsoft Information Security & Risk Management Deployment Review Standards used internally at Microsoft to harden production and pre-production environments for line of business applications. The Deployment Review standards themselves were derived from content released by Microsoft Patterns & Practices, in particular: Improving Web Application Security: Threats and Countermeasures available at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms994921.aspx. It uses an agent-less scan that requires the user to have admin privileges on the target server, as well as any SQL Server instances running on that machine. It can be used by developers to ensure that their codebase works within a secure / hardened environment (although many of the checks are not as applicable for developers).

This release of WACA we included some new features. They include:

Suppressions – you can now suppress any rule you feel is not appropriate for your scan.

Saving of suppression files – once you set up a suppression list you want to use you can save it off for future uses.

You can change the suppressions and regenerate the report without needing to re-run the scan.

Reporting – Updated the reporting section to include suppression information so you know what passed, failed, was not applicable and what was suppressed.

Multiple reports – you can view multiple scans of the same machine or view a single machine’s scan and compare it to other machines.